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High school grad builds 8-bit computer from scratch
21–30 of 74 posts
Re: High school grad builds 8-bit computer from scratch
#22Connecting this with the article about the person who smelted his own sword, I wonder if it's possible for one person to single-handedly build a computer starting from Stone Age technology and raw materials?
Sure it is, but you have to define it better. He could build a difference engine much easier than he could build a system-on-chip. The difference engine would require metalworking and precision tools; the SoC would require a working digital computer to design, which requires lasers and other production technologies that in turn require advanced production technologies to make. Even if you just wanted to make a basic…
This french HAM just about has it covered. He makes his tubes from nearly scratch.
Re: High school grad builds 8-bit computer from scratch
#23By some definition of "scratch", we've also built 8-bit computers from scratch in my Electronics class. My respect for this student's accomplishment is proportional to how much of the processor he has designed and built himself; opcode design and management is a highly nontrivial task. On the other hand, if he has built the processor from pre-existing schematics, the accomplishment simply shows a steady soldering han…
Did you watch the video? This is inspiring to me on many levels. This probably earned him a salaried job at essentially any place he wants to work. Or at the very least an internship. I hope he considers skipping college. There's no reason for him to be driven into ~$50k worth of debt, and I've certainly been happy with my decision not to go.
Agreed, save the skipping college part. The debt incurred from college was paid off more than a decade ago. The gain from my education opened my mind and doors of opportunity. Even if you are smart, sometimes those doors will stay shut.
Re: High school grad builds 8-bit computer from scratch
#24By some definition of "scratch", we've also built 8-bit computers from scratch in my Electronics class. My respect for this student's accomplishment is proportional to how much of the processor he has designed and built himself; opcode design and management is a highly nontrivial task. On the other hand, if he has built the processor from pre-existing schematics, the accomplishment simply shows a steady soldering han…
Did you watch the video? This is inspiring to me on many levels. This probably earned him a salaried job at essentially any place he wants to work. Or at the very least an internship. I hope he considers skipping college. There's no reason for him to be driven into ~$50k worth of debt, and I've certainly been happy with my decision not to go.
While I think the kid is awesome, I don't think it follows that skipping college is the best choice. If he's as brilliant as he seems, he ought to be able to get scholarships to some pretty good schools...where he can learn to go well beyond this, probably faster than he could on his own; even if it's just for the resources a good technical university (like MIT, Caltech, Stanford, etc.) provides.
He could be working with supercomputing, nanotech, quantum computing, Internet-scale problems, etc. in a couple of years at one of those schools. It would take much longer to get there on the DIY path. I know of what I speak: I went the path of most resistance and I was in my late 20s by the time I really started working with people I considered on or above my level and getting paid fairly for it...i.e. building things that millions of people use. I'm probably not as smart as this kid, admittedly, but I'm enough above average to know what his career path will most likely look like if he opts to skip university.
I'm not suggesting he won't be a monstrous success in the future. I'm pretty confident he will be. But, why not take the short cut?
It's the folks who aren't brilliant, that I think should skip college, or choose a super cheap school. Brilliant people should at least spend a few years in the environment of a great school so they can get a feel for how wide and accommodating the world is for a brilliant individual with drive and ambition.
Re: High school grad builds 8-bit computer from scratch
#25You think you’re smart? Well, not as smart as this guy
Challenge accepted.
But I still think using just TTL chips is a little over the top. There are much better ways than that.
Re: High school grad builds 8-bit computer from scratch
#26Connecting this with the article about the person who smelted his own sword, I wonder if it's possible for one person to single-handedly build a computer starting from Stone Age technology and raw materials?
I'm going to say "no", assuming that when you say "computer", you mean transistor-based. I am not an expert on the subject, but I suspect making a facility that can manufacture thousands or millions of transistors, and then operating that facility would take obscenely more man-hours than one man has. Even if his goal was only a 4004, or even just a bunch of breadboards full of TO-92's. Vacuum tube based might be poss…
Or a mechanical computer like the Digi-Comp [1]
Getting through smelting to machine tools would be impressive enough for me. Say stone-age to mid-industrial revolution.
Re: High school grad builds 8-bit computer from scratch
#27By some definition of "scratch", we've also built 8-bit computers from scratch in my Electronics class. My respect for this student's accomplishment is proportional to how much of the processor he has designed and built himself; opcode design and management is a highly nontrivial task. On the other hand, if he has built the processor from pre-existing schematics, the accomplishment simply shows a steady soldering han…
No, the processor appears to be constructed from 74LSxxx TTL logic chips. The memory is 2x32KB off-the-shelf SRAM units, but there comes a point where building things out of quad J-K flip-flops just becomes an exercise in patience and unnecessary spending. The registers are FFs, why make all of the memory that way? Just to say you did it? It doesn't add to the learning experience, just the drudgery.
I think the GP comments wants to say that just soldering the TTL chips w.r.t somebody else's design is not that impressive. I too think so, I have not checked but if I found that the has designed the whole processor (custom op-codes and a whole new implementation of ALU) I would be much more impressed.
Re: High school grad builds 8-bit computer from scratch
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did you watch the video? This is inspiring to me on many levels. This probably earned him a salaried job at essentially any place he wants to work. Or at the very least an internship. I hope he considers skipping college. There's no reason for him to be driven into ~$50k worth of debt, and I've certainly been happy with my decision not to go.
There are thousands, probably tens of thousands of people out there who have built a 8-bit computer (usually Z80 based), according to schematics, from a microprocessor, memory chips, and a bunch of TTL chips. (I know there were at least twenty at my old school, and it was a small college.) It's one college class out of more than thirty, and by no means a replacement for college as a whole.
It used to be the case that MIT required their CS undergraduate students build an 8-bit computer from TTL (mostly 74XX) chips on breadboard in their Freshman on Sophomore year. (And no, we didn't even get a Z80; the most complex parts we got was an ALU unit and a 8250 UART so you could communicate with the computer over an RS-232 port.) It's really too bad that this isn't something which is required any more.
Instead undergraduates are taught how to write Java programs, which is one of those languages where it's impossible to worry about silly things like cache-line misses, because there are too many layers of abstraction between you and the hardware.... (And yes, you youngsters should get off my lawn, while you're at it. :-)
Re: High school grad builds 8-bit computer from scratch
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, the processor appears to be constructed from 74LSxxx TTL logic chips. The memory is 2x32KB off-the-shelf SRAM units, but there comes a point where building things out of quad J-K flip-flops just becomes an exercise in patience and unnecessary spending. The registers are FFs, why make all of the memory that way? Just to say you did it? It doesn't add to the learning experience, just the drudgery.
I think the GP comments wants to say that just soldering the TTL chips w.r.t somebody else's design is not that impressive. I too think so, I have not checked but if I found that the has designed the whole processor (custom op-codes and a whole new implementation of ALU) I would be much more impressed.
According to the website he "built and designed" the computer which I assume includes the instruction set, assembler, etc. I can't find any evidence to the contrary.
It's definitely cool -- not groundbreaking, because after all, people used to do this by hand :) It's a bit like rebuilding classic cars. Its fun to touch the hardware and imagine what Woz may have been thinking when he designed the Apple I 30+ years ago.
Re: High school grad builds 8-bit computer from scratch
#30Connecting this with the article about the person who smelted his own sword, I wonder if it's possible for one person to single-handedly build a computer starting from Stone Age technology and raw materials?
Related: the Global Village Construction Set by Open Source Ecology (slightly confusing name IMO), a set of 50 machines supposed to bootstrap a small civilization. In other words, this is supposed to be enough to build your own computer, or mostly anything. (I won't say it is really enough, especially since most of those aren't even prototyped yet.)